7 PLANTS YOU SHOULD NEVER CUT BACK IN FALL (OR THEY WON'T BLOOM NEXT YEAR), by Green Haven on YouTube. 22 min.
- Video length
- 22 min
- Time to do it
- 10 minutes
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Steps
- 8
What you need
Steps
Wait for a dry day and check your local frost dates first. Timing shifts with your zone, so treat fall as a starting point and ask your extension office if unsure.
Find the green wood on your lavender. It is the soft, leafy growth near the tips of each stem.
Cut only into that green growth. Take off the spent flower spikes and a little leafy stem, no more than a third of the plant.
Never cut into the gray, woody base. Lavender rarely regrows from old gray wood, and a hard cut there can kill the plant.
Leave the gray stems and the woody frame alone until spring. Do any bigger reshaping after new growth starts.
Skip the fall cleanup on your other plants. Leave coneflower, black-eyed Susan and sedum seed heads standing for birds and winter interest.
Tie ornamental grasses loosely in a bundle and cut them in late winter, not now.
Leave bigleaf and oakleaf hydrangea stems and old flower heads on the plant. Prune them in spring instead.
Tips and common mistakes
The gray woody base is the danger zone. If you cut lavender back to bare gray stems, it often never grows back.
Prune spring shrubs like lilac and forsythia only right after they bloom, since they set next year's buds on old wood.
Clean and sharpen your pruners before and after use to avoid spreading disease between plants.
Roses only need a light tidy in fall. Save the real pruning for late winter or early spring.
Questions
Can I cut lavender right down to the ground in autumn?
No. Cutting into the gray woody base can kill the plant. Trim only the green growth and leave the woody frame.
When is the best time to prune lavender?
Light trims into green wood work after flowering and again in early spring. Avoid hard cuts into old wood at any time.
Why should I leave hydrangea flowers on over winter?
Bigleaf and oakleaf hydrangeas bloom on old wood. The old heads protect the buds, so leave them and prune in spring.
This guide was drafted from the video's details and general task knowledge. It has not been checked against the full video. Check the video and relevant product instructions before following a procedure. Report a correction.
